Saturday, 1 March 2014

Goodlands

Everyone knows where
Goodlands is.

It’s not too far from where
you’ve been and not too close to where you’re going. It’s the kinda place where
you find what you’re looking for, one way or another.

And so it was on that
Saturday, “Jalopy Saturday” as the Sheriff called it. “Always frightening those
damned horses, what with all their tooting, and smoking and noise of those
infernal combustible engines.”

Saturday was one of those
days when The Big Man upstairs had painted the sky an azure blue from one
horizon to the other.

“Hey, it feels good to be
alive,” said folks to each other. Well not in so many words but in their looks
and smiles, each knew what the other meant.

As you perambulated up the
boardwalk, waving to friends and neighbours, you could smell the cooking and
baking coming from Mrs Lent’s open window. It sure did make the nose feel that
it had a reason for living on those kind of days. That was followed by the
sweet sound of musical tunes which lifted the spirit, coming from the old
Bakelite radio that sat in Mrs Well’s front room. I tell you that radio always
smelled as if it was just about to burst into flames. It never did, because things
like that just didn’t happen in Goodlands.

Saturday was the day that
the pastor made his weekly trip to the bakery on the corner of Cherry Street
and Chew Avenue. I’m thinking that calling Chew an avenue, was a name too far
for the founding fathers, ‘cause it barely stretched from here to there.

For some peculiar reason of
which I have no understanding, everyone in Goodlands would go to their front
door on a fine Saturday morning and wish the pastor all the best on his trip to
Sankie’s Bakery. Then, when he’d filled his arms with enough bread to feed a
biblical crowd, he’d turn around and walk back up to the church with all the
folks still standing at their front doors wishing the pastor well with his meal.

If you didn’t know
Goodlands, you’d probably think they’d all gone Johnny Sidebar (he was the man
who really discovered electricity but fried his brains before he had a chance
to tell the world and ran out of Goodlands and into the Birkmire Desert. He was
never, ever seen again). Although some folks tell of lonely howling that can be
heard on Moonboys road on a quiet night.

Like they good folks say,
you don’t have to be crazy to live here, but it really does help.

Old Sheriff James was out
on his porch, rocking and rolling on his chair, shaking his head at the way the
jalopies were careering around town.

“Never had such stupidity
in my day,” he’d sigh. “A man knew where he was with a horse.”

Now don’t get me wrong with
the picture I’m painting here. The sheriff was a good man, sure enough. He was
just coming to the end of his time on this earth and new-fangled stuff always
looks out of focus to each of us who have lived high on the hog in earlier
times. We all have our season, and the sheriff’s was nudging up against winter.
His leaves were falling from his tree and he knew there was nothing anyone
could do about it.

Sure it was sad in its way,
but everyone had to make way for what was to come, and life made sure that
happened by making folks uncomfortable in the newness of things.

The ‘old days’ wasn’t
really a place, it was a way of thinking, of doing, a place where everyone
thought that manners and morals had been better. Things weren’t really getting
worse in Goodlands, just different.

No one, and I mean no one,
came to this town and wished they hadn’t. It had a sap in its veins and it was
a sap that oozed happiness and sunshine.

You see there are some
folks who think that such places don’t really exist, but they do I tell you.
Everything you see in a town has been a dream once in a head, and if you can
dream nicely, then Goodlands is what occurs.

Now I don’t want you to say
to me that I’ve been sitting too long out in the sun, ‘cause I ain’t. I think
that if you’re passing one day, you need to come to Goodlands and have a look
at the pastor or the sheriff and you’ll say, hey, kid you were right. This is
the happiest town this side of the mirror.

I said that everyone gets
what they need in Goodlands, but that don’t mean, it’s what they want. You can
come to Goodlands and get advice that you weren’t keen on hearing. No sir, but
it will be a truth that you needed to hear. Something that puts you on a
straight path for the rest of your journey.

That was the funny thing
about Goodlands, no one remembered just why they came to the town in the first
place but they were all pleased that they had.

Now I ain’t saying the
place was magical or anything, far be it for me to be the crazy one but there
were little miracles that popped up here and there, enough to make you go –
‘well, I’ll be………’.

‘Cause that was the thing,
no one came to a bad end in Goodlands. There was no hospital and the doctor
used to spend most of his days playing cards with the sheriff. People only left
Goodlands in two ways; either they had decided that they were in the right mind
to move on to somewhere else, or they just got plum tired and decided it was
time to close their eyes.

Seriously. Old Man Peters,
last June watched the pastor and his bread for one last time, then just said,
“I’m ready” and closed his eyes. The doctor, who was holding a straight flush,
came over said, “yep, he’s gone,” and then went back to his cards. Now, he
wasn’t being mean or anything, he just knew that Old Man Peters had chosen that
time as his end time and that he was ready to leave.

Sometimes your eyes just
get tired of seeing everything and everyone and when you’re tired of Goodlands,
(as a wise man once said), you’re tired of living.

The big miracle on that
Jalopy Saturday was when little Susie Cartwwright wandered away from her mother
and walked on to Main Street. Desmond, the painter, couldn’t see her and would
have probably knocked little Susie into a million pieces with his bright red
jalopy - but like I say, no one dies in Goodlands, not unless they want to.

It was like this, as the
pastor was wandering back up the street with his arms full of the warmest,
freshest bread, he saw the danger that little Susie was in and threw a stick of
that French type bread. It hit Desmond right between the eyes and stopped him
in his tracks. Little Susie’s mother, grabbed that little girl by the hand and
pulled her back on to the boardwalk.

Susie’s mother thanked the
pastor but as he says, “It’s all part of the plan, Mam, all part of the plan.”

And you know what, he just
might be right.

On those warm, endless summer
evenings, just as the sun is turning blood orange and the insects are starting
to sing, you can stand in the middle of the street and look up at all the open
windows. Friends shouting to friends in apartments across from each other.

“How’s life Mabel?”

“Why, just deevine, thanks
for asking, Melanie.”

Music and smells, and
arguments, and love, all flowing out of the windows into the street and making
you feel warm, somehow. But why take my word for it, why don’t you come down
some night and listen?

About Me

I was born in the West Coast of Scotland - a beautiful part of the world. Grew up in Paris, France and Woodstock, New York. I studied writing at college and gained a Masters. I wrote a short film 'Stealing Moses' which was selected by the British Urban Film Festival, 2015 and was supported by Channel 4. I have been selected to pitch at BAFTA, twice. I trained through TAPS at Emmerdale and The Bill.